Following up on the earlier post, can anyone send me some particularly rich and egregious examples of chat-meisters on the various shows getting crooks and felons like Colson, Liddy et al. to dump on Mark Felt without pressing them on their own crimes?

Colson had the ^#$%* to say this in the Postâs article this morning:

"There were times when I should have blown the whistle, so I understand his feelings. But I cannot approve of his methods."

Blow the whistle on what? Himself? Colson tries to make it seem like he was tortured about blowing the whistle on others, while engaging in no real wrongdoing himself. What a liar. Heâs never really lived up to his crimes, other than saying he âwas involved in Watergate.â Time for us to press this fool to come clean.

RW

Makes me think of when the lion shall lie down with the lamb. Only in the DC version of the end time, which I guess we're now in, the whistle-blowers and truth-tellers will be forced to lay down with the crooks they turned in. And judged as equally worthy.

Josh: Is there anything more despicable than allowing the likes of Chuck Colson and G. Gordon Liddy, and even Pat Buchanan (although he was never implicated in Watergate) to go on TV and call Mark Felt a bum and a disgrace. That Matthews and others have, with either little or no objection to Colson and Liddyâs slander, is outrageous. Mark Felt may or may not be a genuine hero, but what he did was honorable and took courage â and he is certainly not a bum like his accusers.

This hadn't occured to me. Or rather I hadn't realized it because I barely watch any political TV anymore. But if this is the case, it really is outrageous.

Nixon was a crook, as were most of his cronies. And Felt was a law man who ended up getting that all busted. As I note below, Felt's motives may not be black and white. But it's hard for me to see where any of these jokers gets off passing judgment on him.

I thought Chuck Colson's whole redemption shtick made at least some pro forma nod toward conceding that his Watergate era criminality maybe wasn't such a great thing after all. I guess not.

As for Gordon Liddy, he has, I guess, been accepted back into polite society, of a sort, for a mix of his character (and I'd say I mean that in the descriptive rather than than evaluative sense), his sense of humor and the undeniable fact that he never tried to make excuses for what he did. Took his lumps, etc.

Having said that, he's a crook, a bit nutty, and rightly did time for his crimes not only of the ordinary sort but actually against the constitution itself.

I'm not quite sure what to think of the fact that in its nostalgic flood-the-zone coverage the Deep Throat-Mark Felt story, the Washington Post has set up a special Deep Throat Revealed blog.

That said, I was fascinated to be reminded, in this post from last night, that even though Felt's identity remained secret for some three decades, H.R. Haldeman had Felt pegged from the start.

They republish this excerpt from one of the Nixon tapes ...

Haldeman: We know what's left, and we know who leaked it.

Nixon: Somebody in the FBI?

Haldeman: Yes, sir. Mark Felt. You can't say anything about this because it will screw up our source and there's a real concern. Mitchell is the only one who knows about this and he feels strongly that we better not do anything...

As Tim Noah points out in Slate, Felt has long been the pick of choice for what Tim calls "the better class of Deep Throat sleuthâ[the] discriminating, Campari-sipping sophisticates."

I got a note today reminding me how many Republican senators, up for reelection in 2006, have records of either supporting or actually voting for Social Security privatization.

Needless to say, in most cases, they're running for cover now, looking for various outs and mealymouthed responses to get them off the hook for taking any position at all -- some good examples include Sens. Burns (R) of Montana and Talent (R) of Missouri. And it applies even more to the some of Republicans running against incumbent Dems or for open seats.

Obviously, this makes sense politically for Democrats. It'll keep a number of these guys politically off-balance and complicate their public connections to the sitting president. Should they be reelected it will also help lock them into a good position, should they come out against privatization on the hustings this year or next.

But accountability and clarity on the big public issues of the day is always good on substance too. No apologies required. And it simply doesn't cut it for anyone on the ballot next year not to have a straightforward position on whether or not they support Social Security.

Small changes in taxes or benefits are one thing. But, do you support Social Security or do you want to replace some or all of it with private accounts? No one should slide through without giving voters a straight-up answer to that question.

If you have examples of this -- cases where someone on the ballot next year (House or Senate) say they have no definite position on this issue, but has previous votes or positions which say otherwise -- I'd appreciate it if you can mention them at the Elections 2006 discussion table over at TPMCafe. If you haven't visited yet, here's a brief note about how to do it.